Chapter 1 - The Red Pouch Above Her Head
Rebecca Sloan slammed the red medical pouch onto the top of the refrigerator while ten-year-old Emma Hayes clawed at her throat.
“You will not ruin our trip again.”
Emma’s lips were already swelling. Red patches climbed from her striped T-shirt toward her jaw as she reached for the refrigerator handle and missed.
The pouch held two epinephrine auto-injectors, antihistamine, Emma’s emergency instructions, and the number of her allergist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Her mother had taught her never to be more than a few steps from it.
Now it sat eight feet above the kitchen floor.
Emma stumbled and collapsed beside her backpack.
Diane Bennett stood in the doorway wearing a beige blouse and the expression she used whenever someone inconvenienced her.
“Stop performing for attention.”
Rebecca kicked the backpack toward the pantry and pressed Emma’s shoulder against the tile when she tried to crawl after it.
“I can’t breathe,” Emma gasped.
Beyond the kitchen windows, Rebecca’s two children waited in the SUV with their overnight bags. They were supposed to spend the day at an expensive lakefront resort outside Sandusky, where Rebecca would photograph a sponsored family experience for her struggling travel-planning business.
Emma had been included.
Until breakfast.
Diane turned toward the driveway. “We’re already late.”
Emma’s body went limp for a moment. Her eyelids fluttered.
Then she whispered, “Grandma, tell her whose idea this was.”
Diane looked at Rebecca.
The confidence left her face.
Rebecca stood quickly, grabbed the car keys, and told herself Emma was trying to frighten them into missing the resort check-in.
They left her on the kitchen floor.
After the SUV disappeared, Emma rolled onto her side and pressed the emergency button on the cellular watch her mother had insisted she wear.
She could no longer speak when the dispatcher answered.
But the watch transmitted Diane’s address.
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When paramedics entered seven minutes later, the red pouch was still on top of the refrigerator.
What they did not yet know was that someone had placed it there before Emma ate breakfast.
